June 13, 2019
Just a Blog About @justaconstructionguy
If you follow social media trends, you might have stumbled across Omar, aka @justaconstructionguy. A lot of questions have been asked about him, so I want to make a few things very clear. Omar is a real person and yes, that is his real name. Yes, he is a general contractor who has worked in many areas of construction. From commercial building to home building to remodeling to sub contract work. Those are his tools, his van, his yellow hard hat (that doesn’t fit right because the leather head straps are worn out) and he really does like cigars, whisky and coffee. He’s a family man with a wife and kids. And for some weird reason, there are people who can’t wrap their head around that. Fortunately for Omar, there are way more people who can.
You may ask, “how the hell did he become an influencer?” I can explain how he became an influencer, but I’m not sure that I can explain how he became an INFLUENCER. Part of our social strategy has always included influencers. We send them product, money, a few guidelines and they do their thing. Some of the posts get lots of likes or comments, others don’t. The goal is usually to expand brand awareness and/or drive sales. In one of our creative meetings, we talked about how a lot of the images and influencers were very similar. As a company, we believe that everyone deserves a great cup of coffee, but we were leaving a huge part of “everyone” out of our content.
We started brainstorming about who might be the influencer that really represented our brand. An influencer who could change the game. Someone who was different than anyone else out there. East Austin, where our flagship coffee bar is, feels like it has been under construction for years, mainly because it has. Like many parts of the city, there are construction workers on every corner, and it has brought us a whole new group of coffee drinkers. On any given weekday morning that I am at Cuvée Coffee Bar, I will see a line of people in hard hats or vests waiting to get their caffeine fix. And while the slower sales due to construction and road closures are a bummer, I love seeing these new guests. I made a post about that back in February.
So as we discussed how we might expand beyond the typical social media influencer, the idea of a construction worker lifestyle influencer was born. But how would we find someone who actually wants to do this? Luckily, Omar had been doing work for some of our team for years and they said, “We know the perfect guy.” When the team pitched the idea to Omar, he said he loved it. Then he admitted that he didn’t really know much about social media and asked if we would help him, and that’s exactly what we did.
As much as I would like to say that the goal was to get Omar hundreds of thousands of followers, the reality is that we thought if we got him to 1,000 it would be a home run. None of us ever imagined that he could go from 75 followers one day to 325k (and counting). No money was spent to promote or share his account, this honestly caught us all off guard. The night that it started to blow up, Omar actually sent a text asking, “is 100,000 followers good?” That’s just who this guy really is. He’s a humble, hardworking, family man and we are lucky to be able to help him share some of the things that he truly enjoys. In his own words, “I’m blown away by the response that the page has gotten. There have been so many kind messages and an outpouring of love. It’s great to see it make so many people happy.”
We asked Omar to be our influencer and he jumped at the idea. It was never about the number of followers. He was our influencer at 25 and he still is at 365k followers. For Cuvée, it was always about breaking the mold and giving people something different, which is what we try to do every day. We are honored that Omar chose to work with us and we are all humbled at the positive response to him as your average Joe influencer. As long as Omar wants to keep working together, we’ll keep his caffeine tank on full.
You may ask, “how the hell did he become an influencer?” I can explain how he became an influencer, but I’m not sure that I can explain how he became an INFLUENCER. Part of our social strategy has always included influencers. We send them product, money, a few guidelines and they do their thing. Some of the posts get lots of likes or comments, others don’t. The goal is usually to expand brand awareness and/or drive sales. In one of our creative meetings, we talked about how a lot of the images and influencers were very similar. As a company, we believe that everyone deserves a great cup of coffee, but we were leaving a huge part of “everyone” out of our content.
We started brainstorming about who might be the influencer that really represented our brand. An influencer who could change the game. Someone who was different than anyone else out there. East Austin, where our flagship coffee bar is, feels like it has been under construction for years, mainly because it has. Like many parts of the city, there are construction workers on every corner, and it has brought us a whole new group of coffee drinkers. On any given weekday morning that I am at Cuvée Coffee Bar, I will see a line of people in hard hats or vests waiting to get their caffeine fix. And while the slower sales due to construction and road closures are a bummer, I love seeing these new guests. I made a post about that back in February.
So as we discussed how we might expand beyond the typical social media influencer, the idea of a construction worker lifestyle influencer was born. But how would we find someone who actually wants to do this? Luckily, Omar had been doing work for some of our team for years and they said, “We know the perfect guy.” When the team pitched the idea to Omar, he said he loved it. Then he admitted that he didn’t really know much about social media and asked if we would help him, and that’s exactly what we did.
As much as I would like to say that the goal was to get Omar hundreds of thousands of followers, the reality is that we thought if we got him to 1,000 it would be a home run. None of us ever imagined that he could go from 75 followers one day to 325k (and counting). No money was spent to promote or share his account, this honestly caught us all off guard. The night that it started to blow up, Omar actually sent a text asking, “is 100,000 followers good?” That’s just who this guy really is. He’s a humble, hardworking, family man and we are lucky to be able to help him share some of the things that he truly enjoys. In his own words, “I’m blown away by the response that the page has gotten. There have been so many kind messages and an outpouring of love. It’s great to see it make so many people happy.”
We asked Omar to be our influencer and he jumped at the idea. It was never about the number of followers. He was our influencer at 25 and he still is at 365k followers. For Cuvée, it was always about breaking the mold and giving people something different, which is what we try to do every day. We are honored that Omar chose to work with us and we are all humbled at the positive response to him as your average Joe influencer. As long as Omar wants to keep working together, we’ll keep his caffeine tank on full.
